i'm victor blackwell sitting in this morning for randi kaye. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com >>> we start this hour in the middle east. there's a bit of hope for a negotiated cease-fire. leaders from egypt and france are trying to mediate. for the past five days israel and hamas have fired rockets and bombed one another, israeli air strikes have taken a heavy toll on gaza and hamas. right now israel is keeping open the possibility of a ground offensive. they've got 30,000 troopons the border with another 75,000 reservists being called up. now, i want to show you something that played out live on israeli television just a short time ago. watch this. what you're called is called an iron dome. this is egypt's defensive zone system. they're tracking down two rockets. at the end, the small puffs there, that's the signals of success that those intercepters headed off those rockets. so far israel says a thousand rockets have been fired. hamas puts it at about 900. the constant threat has those in israel in fear. >> reporter: there's another attack, another rocket alert going on. we've